The Fifty Best Scenes

Now that the season is officially over, we’ve watched and rewatched every minute of every episode of television from the past year to determine our favorites; so with nothing but spoilers ahead, here’s our list of the most award-worthy performances (Emmy voters, you’re going to want to take notes)

The Rules To be eligible for this list, the episode must have aired between June 1, 2013, and May 31, 2014. In the interests of diversity, we limited ourselves to one scene or sketch per show. And in the interests of our sanity, we limited ourselves to 50 scenes total. We look forward to your angry letters, Supernatural fanatics, Newsroom junkies, and fans (fan?) of The Goldbergs.

1. Breaking Bad[EP. 14 ”Ozymandias”], AMC Scene Walt (Bryan Cranston) tries to get the family to run. Why You could argue that the whole series was building to this moment. Since the first episode, Walt has claimed that he got into selling meth to protect his family. Hank has to die before everyone realizes the truth: The family needs to protect itself from Walt. It’s hard to pick the most devastating shot. Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte) throwing a scrawny arm in front of his mom (Anna Gunn) to save her from his dad? Skyler, perfectly framed between a telephone and a set of knives, forced to choose whether to call the cops on her husband or kill him herself? Baby Holly crying as Walt kidnaps her while Skyler, broken, drops to her knees in the middle of the street? Maybe the worst thing about this gruesome scene is that it’s only happening because Skyler believes Walt killed Hank. After all the truly monstrous, evil things he’s lied about, the one thing she’s willing to kill him for is the one thing he didn’t do.

2. Game of Thrones[EP. 6 ”The Laws of Gods and Men”], HBOScene Tyrion’s raging outburst while on trial for his life.Why Having long endured callous abuse, unjustified mistrust, murderous plots, and cruel manipulations — and that’s just from his own family — Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) finally tells the King’s Landing court just what he thinks of them in an epic tirade that’s equal parts thrilling and self-destructive. ”Every scene with Tyrion, every interaction, was all leading up to this moment,” says writer Bryan Cogman. ”I keep coming back to how piercing his gaze is throughout that speech — he’s just stabbing daggers into every person he’s talking to.”

3. The Good Wife[EP. 5 ”Hitting the Fan”], CBSScene Upon learning that Alicia (Julianna Margulies) is leaving to start her own firm, Will (Josh Charles) storms into her office and sweeps everything off her desk.Why Fans were clinging to the notion that Will and Alicia belong together, but her act of betrayal was the final blow to their tenuous love affair. Alicia’s decision to make a clean break set into motion the most satisfying — and depressing — season yet of this Emmy-starved drama.

5. Sherlock[EP. 2 ”The Sign of Three”], PBSScene Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) gives his best-man speech for Watson (Martin Freeman).Why When Sherlock toasts his friends, he makes the wedding guests (and Sherlock viewers) laugh and awww — and solves a few mind-bending mysteries in the process. Best men everywhere, the bar has officially been raised.

6. Orange Is the New Black[EP. 11 ”Tall Men With Feelings”], NETFLIXScene Crazy Eyes’ poignant query.Why Famous for peeing on the prison floor, Crazy Eyes (Uzo Aduba) has always been the comic relief — until she inquires about her nickname. The heartbreaking question made us wonder why we are laughing at all.

7. Louie[EP. 3 ”So Did the Fat Lady”], FXScene Vanessa (Sarah Baker) sets Louie (Louis C.K.) straight on what dating is like for plus-size women.Why Baker makes Vanessa pity-proof as she unleashes a truth-filled screed. The highlight: her scolding Louie for denying that she’s fat, as if fat is the worst thing he can call her.

8. Masters of Sex[EP. 6 ”Brave New World”], SHOWTIMEScene Margaret (Allison Janney) is interviewed to join Masters and Johnson’s sex study.Why The quiet wife of a closeted college provost painfully realizes in being rejected from the study that she’s never had an orgasm. Janney explains how she connected with her character.

What were you told about the role when you first signed on?Janney [EPs] Michelle Ashford and Sarah Timberman hadn’t written it yet, but they said this character is in this relationship with her husband and she slowly finds out through this sex study about all these things women experience with sex, and she’s realizing she doesn’t have any sex. Margaret feels so inadequate as a woman and determined to please her husband. How does playing her compare with your previous television roles?Janney The West Wing was pretty phenomenal, but this stuff — the story line, the emotional life, the journey — has been challenging and an honor and a joy. Doing the scenes when I don’t have to say anything and Margaret’s learning all this information at her mah-jongg games, that’s just so fun for me. What do you love most about the show? Janney I had no idea that our story line was going to resonate as much as it did. I fell in love with Margaret, and I love that other people did too.

9. Veep[EP. 4 ”Clovis”], HBOScene Clovis CEO Craig (Tim Baltz) puts a smart watch — a.k.a. a Smarch — on VP Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).Why It is wicked fun to see a pretentiously casual tech CEO try to show off his next-level watch, only to have the moment descend into fruitless handshakes that resemble everything from tree sawing to cow milking.

10. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart[EP. 43 Jan. 8, 2014], COMEDY CENTRALScene Jon Stewart calls out New Jersey governor Chris Christie.Why Leave it to Stewart to take something as pedestrian as Bridgegate and thoroughly undress it in a sly, righteous, mad-as-hell speech that says everything short of ”Argo f—yourself.”

11. House of Cards[EP. 4 ”Chapter 17”], NETFLIXScene Claire (Robin Wright) reveals she got an abortion.Why What starts as an act of bravery — the vice president’s wife admits on TV that she had an abortion — turns into a master class in media manipulation. Proof that in D.C., nothing is too personal to use for political means.

13. American Horror Story: Coven[EP. 2 ”Boy Parts”], FXScene Supreme witch Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange) and voodoo priestess Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett) meet.Why As Fiona and Marie size each other up at Laveau’s salon, the undercurrent of danger pulsing between these rivals is trumped only by the thrill of watching Lange and Bassett engage in a thespian throwdown.

14. Saturday Night Live[EP. 10 Dec. 21, 2013], NBCScene The ladies drop a beat about having sex in your childhood room with ”(Do It on My) Twin Bed.”Why SNL‘s digital shorts have always been more bro than broad, so the first music video to feature the whole female cast was a welcome treat — and one of the season’s flat-out funniest bits. ”We had a Britney or Pussycat Dolls vibe in mind, and that’s an insane look…to see comedians go full sex is the least sexy thing ever,” says Aidy Bryant of the short, which was brainstormed on Tuesday, put to music on Wednesday, shot on Friday, and edited on Saturday.

15. Scandal[EP. 15 ”Mama Said Knock You Out”], ABCScene Fitz (Tony Goldwyn) and Mellie (Bellamy Young) duke it out over who’s to blame for their broken marriage.Why Everything came out when the long-simmering confrontation between POTUS and FLOTUS exploded, but what wasn’t mentioned — that Fitz’s father raped Mellie — made the argument even more powerful. We can’t decide which was better: Goldwyn’s terrifying outburst or Young’s agonizing restraint.

17. Mad Men[EP. 6 ”The Strategy”], AMCScene Don (Jon Hamm) and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) slow-dance to ”My Way.”Why In an echo of the after-hours tussle in season 4’s ”The Suitcase,” our booze-loosened heroes take part in an emotional, elegantly plotted dance that demonstrates how, for better or for worse, their souls are inextricably linked.

19. The Big Bang Theory[EP. 15 ”The Locomotive Manipulation”], CBSScene Sheldon (Jim Parsons) surprises Amy (Mayim Bialik) with a kiss.Why Over Valentine’s Day dinner, Sheldon launches into a tirade about forced romance before a peck turns into a precious make-out — and reminds us why Parsons deserves his Emmys.

20. The Walking Dead[EP. 14 ”The Grove”], AMCScene Carol (Melissa McBride) kills Lizzie (Brighton Sharbino).Why From the very first episode of TWD, it’s been clear that even the young are not safe in the apocalypse. But four seasons in, Carol’s decision to shoot her ”adopted” daughter Lizzie is still one of the drama’s most shocking moments.

22. Silicon Valley[EP. 3 ”Articles of Incorporation”], HBOScene Tech billionaire Peter Gregory (Christopher Evan Welch) ignores pleas for emergency funds from start-up execs while studying every item on the Burger King menu…and then explains how cicada cycles will affect sesame seed futures and get them the money they need.Why It’s a quirky, uneasy scene that ends in comic relief as Gregory schools everyone with his Jedi-like logic. It’s also one of the last that Welch would shoot; he died of lung cancer in December. Here, series co-creator Mike Judge remembers the 48-year-old actor.

”There’s a big tech person who was described to me as almost Asperger-y. He would sit there and mumble something like ‘Okay, we’re going to buy this company, and then we’re going to buy their main customer and supplier, and then we’re going to lower the price’…. People would be taking notes and go, ‘Oh my God, he just made us 60 million dollars’…. When Chris first read for the part, I was just blown away. I knew this was something really special. It made me think about doing a scene like that…. It’s weird to talk about because the whole thing is sad and tragic. I do feel really fortunate that we got the five episodes with him, and I feel like he ended on a high note. Although everything I’ve ever seen him in, he’s been a high note. He was one of a kind.”

23. Sons of Anarchy[EP. 13 ”A Mother’s Work”], FXScene When a chillingly impenetrable Jax (Charlie Hunnam) confronts his wife, Tara (Maggie Siff), in the park, she’s convinced he’s decided to kill her and asks him not to hurt her in front of their young boys.Why Siff grounds SOA‘s operatic dialogue with the fear, the conviction, and the honesty of a woman finally admitting aloud that she believes her husband has turned into a monster.

24. The Killing[EP. 10 ”Six Minutes”], AMCScene Ray (Peter Sarsgaard) walks toward his execution.Why If you make it through this scene once, you’ll never watch it again. Prison guards are dragging death-row inmate Ray to be hanged when he glimpses his son through the window. There’s no dialogue. Just looking at Sarsgaard’s face, you can pinpoint the exact moment when Ray’s fear of death turns into a much worse fear for his son’s life.

25. Inside Amy Schumer[EP. 2 ”I’m So Bad”], COMEDY CENTRALScene Amy’s videogaming experience takes a disturbing turn.Why Writing about rape might be the hardest thing in comedy. In this sketch Amy is playing a first-person military game when her female-soldier avatar gets raped, unlocking level 25, which is ”just, like, a ton of paperwork.” Later she learns her attacker was found guilty but his commanding officer put him back on duty. Schumer says the writers were inspired by The Invisible War, a doc about sexual assault in the military. ”I loved the idea of using a Call of Duty-type game to highlight that,” Schumer tells EW. ”Those games are dark anyway, but how about we show something that really happens?” Funny? Unfunny? Like all important comedy, it’s both.

26. The Americans[EP. 9 ”Martial Eagle”], FXScene Philip (Matthew Rhys) rages at his daughter, Paige (Holly Taylor), after she donates her savings to charity.Why Rhys turns in a furious, must-watch performance as an underground Russian spy who attacks Paige for giving money to that enemy of the comrades: the church. The subtext is rich — he has killed innocents for a cause she can’t possibly understand — and the dialogue is sharp, including the best claim to martyrdom ever delivered by somebody’s parents: “You respect Jesus but not us?”

27. Justified[EP. 10 ”Weight”], FXScene Danny Crowe (AJ Buckley) tests the 21-Foot Rule on Raylan (Timothy Olyphant).Why At last we were going to see if a knife-wielding nutjob really would win a duel with a gunslinger if he charged him from a distance of 21 feet or less. But in an abrupt and uproarious twist, Danny takes a few steps, falls headfirst into the grave dug for his beloved dog, Chelsea, and stabs himself through the chin instead. Exec producer Graham Yost will always remember the moment he and Olyphant, who’d pitched the death, first saw director John Dahl’s storyboards. ”There was a giddiness,” Yost explains. ”The way Dahl shot it with those feet sticking up, you know, that’s Elmore [Leonard]. It’s funny and it’s horrifying.” And quintessential Justified.

28. Girls[EP. 7 ”Beach House”], HBOScene The big fight.Why College friendships don’t last forever, and this brawl between four besties underscores why: Storing up years of resentment, only to tell your friends what you really think of them, can lead to total cruelty — and total hilarity. As Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) says, ”Being honest is fun.”

29. Orphan Black[EP. 3 ”Mingling Its Own Nature With It”], BBC AMERICAScene Cosima watches her clone Jennifer waste away in a video journal.Why Jennifer Fitzsimmons’ death may have stretched over months, but actress Tatiana Maslany was able to draw a full portrait of her in less than two minutes with a briskly stitched tapestry of confessional recordings.

30. Broad City[EP. 10 ”The Last Supper”], COMEDY CENTRALScene Abbi’s (Abbi Jacobson) birthday dinner ends with a shellfish disaster.Why Few shows truly capture what a best friend really is: the person who, even though it’s her birthday, carries your allergy-ravaged body out of an upscale restaurant and delivers you to a cozy hospital bed.

31. Community[EP. 4 ”Cooperative Polygraphy”], NBCScene Pierce (Chevy Chase) says bye to every character through the executor of his will, Mr. Stone (Walton Goggins).Why In an episode that showcased what this meta-comedy could do just by sticking all of its characters in a room, the scene proved a crassly touching way to handle a farewell for an actor who’d exited the show.

32. Grey’s Anatomy[EP. 22 ”We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”], ABCScene Burke (Isaiah Washington) offers Cristina (Sandra Oh) his job.Why Hearing her former fiancé admit he can’t work with her for his marriage’s sake is the ultimate validation for the stoic Dr. Yang. And getting one final moment of crackling chemistry between the two was the ultimate parting gift for fans.

33. The Tonight Show[EP. 46 April 28, 2014], NBCScene Jimmy Fallon’s lip-synch battle with Emma Stone.Why The new prince of late-night deftly pairs his guests with segments that bring out their truest selves. We knew Stone was a talented charmer, but her uncanny lip-synch renditions left us stunned.

34. Jimmy Kimmel Live![EP. 14 Feb. 6, 2014], ABCScene Celebrities Read Mean Tweets #6.Why This one — which featured Tim Robbins calling out the bad speller who called him a ”pretensious c—” and Bill Murray chuckling at the tweeter who said he was glad that Murray got shot in Zombieland — contained many favorites. Co-head writer Molly McNearney takes us through the cruel-ing process of assembling the segment.

How do you pick which tweets to use?McNearney Anytime we book a guest on the show, we search their name on Twitter and pull all of the terrible things written about them. I take out ones that would offend them to a point that they wouldn’t want to come on or just shouldn’t be said on TV. But I keep some mean ones in there. I put the harshest ones at the top and the more gentle ones at the bottom. Some celebrities are comfortable reading the harsh ones. In fact, some guests ask, ”Can we please get another round? These aren’t mean enough.”Like who? McNearney Cate Blanchett wanted meaner. Julia Louis-Dreyfus wanted meaner…. Some people want to be in it — Fred Willard, the Killers — and there are no mean tweets about them. I guess it’s a good problem to have. What’s the meanest tweet about you that you’ve ever read?McNearney I got one that said, ”You’re really hot for a woman in her 40s,” and I think I was 31.

35. The Returned[EP. 1 ”Camille”], SUNDANCE TVScene A flashback reveals that Camille (Yara Pilartz) and Léna (Jenna Thiam) are actually twins.Why Camille died on a class trip, while Léna, who stayed home, lived. Years later, Léna is older, but Camille is back from the dead and frozen in time. The scene sums up survivor’s guilt perfectly.

36. Hannibal[EP. 12 ”Tome-wan”], NBCScene Mason Verger (Michael Pitt) feeds his own face to dogs, then eats his nose.Why Dr. Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) drugs his unruly patient and encourages him to make a meal of himself in what might be the goriest scene in broadcast history. ”Pitt was so game for whatever, he’s practically giddy in that sequence,” showrunner Bryan Fuller says.

37. Broadchurch[EP. 8], BBC AMERICAScene Beth (Jodie Whittaker) confronts Ellie (Olivia Colman) after learning who killed her son.Why The pain of two mothers crashes to a tragic climax as Beth comes face-to-face with her friend — who is not just a detective on the case but, as it turns out, also the wife of the murderer — in a darkened field outside Beth’s home. ”How could you not know?” she cries, before walking away. And a devastated Ellie, who once asked the wife of a sex abuser the same question, is left to wonder why she has no answers.

39. Doctor Who[50TH-ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ”The Day of the Doctor”], BBC AMERICAScene The return of Tom Baker.Why There wasn’t a dry eye in the house — at least not in houses inhabited by Whovians of a certain age — when the show’s beloved ’70s-era star made an appearance to chat with Matt Smith’s Time Lord at the end of the special.

40. Arrow[EP. 23 ”Unthinkable”], THE CWScene Arrow (Stephen Amell) and Deathstroke’s (Manu Bennett) final fight.Why This long-awaited throwdown gave fans two fights — one past and one present — combined with a sinking ship, creating an unforgettable (and highly physical) conclusion to their rivalry. Arrow did not fail his city, and the show’s stunt team did not fail its fans.

41. The Colbert Report[EP. 116 June 19, 2013], COMEDY CENTRALScene Stephen Colbert eulogizes his mother.Why Colbert put his blowhard character aside to pay heartfelt tribute: ”It may sound greedy to want more days with a person who lived so long, but the fact that my mother was 92 does not diminish, it only magnifies, the enormity of the room whose door has now quietly shut.”

42. Portlandia[EP. 3 ”Celery”], IFCScene Steve Buscemi stars as a struggling celery salesman/brand strategist desperate to make the vegetable seem as hip as kale.Why Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s savvy the-way-we-live-now lampoon of the modern foodie’s fickle tastes — complete with nods to everything from Glengarry Glen Ross to Grisham thrillers — sucker punched us so hard, we spit out our pickled ramps in amazement. The sketch, nearly cinematic in scope, made excellent use of Buscemi — and will forever make us more cautious about going to the farmer’s market.

43. Parenthood[EP. 18 ”The Offer”], NBCScene Adam (Peter Krause) and Kristina (Monica Potter) pick up Max (Max Burkholder), who has Asperger’s, after his field trip is cut short.Why The only thing more agonizing than Max’s revelation that he feels like ”a freak” is the look on the faces of his parents, who sit helpless in the front seat.

44. Looking[EP. 5 ”Looking for the Future”], HBOScene Patrick (Jonathan Groff) and Richie (Raúl Castillo) muse about life on a date at the planetarium.Why This tenderly written, understated scene captures the flirtation of a modern gay couple and realistically discusses sex with a comic lightness that never feels derisive.

45. The Blacklist[EP. 9 ”Anslo Garrick”], NBCScene Red (James Spader) tells an injured Donald (Diego Klattenhoff) why it’s not their time to die.Why What began as another TV procedural has blossomed into this year’s breakout hit, all due to Spader, who dazzles with his effortless magnetism and keen ability to make Red relatable, like in this moment in a cell.

47. Archer[EP. 13 ”Archer Vice: Arrival/Departure”], FXScene Lana is visited by Archer as she feeds and bonds with her new baby of unknown paternity.Why The season ends with the mother — or should we say daddy? — of all cliff-hangers when Lana announces, ”Sterling Archer, I’d like you to meet your daughter, Abbiejean.”

48. The Simpsons[EP. 20 ”Brick Like Me”], FOXScene Homer realizes he’s stuck in a LEGO world because he’s afraid of Lisa growing up — and outgrowing him.Why Homer offers up some classic blunder-headed thinking (Marge: ”Homey, ask yourself, Can you really live in a paradise if you know it’s just pretend?” Homer: ”Marge, who would give up eating steak in the Matrix to go slurp goo in Zion?”), and his juvenile joy is effectively illustrated through consequence-free LEGO magic: He kicks off his head and takes down Chief Wiggum’s helicopter by throwing a parking meter at it, only to have the resulting mess tossed into a plastic container, to be rebuilt another day. Indestructible, like The Simpsons.

49. Sleepy Hollow[EP. 13 ”Bad Blood”], FOXScene The epic nine-minute reveal at the end of season 1.Why Finales are full of hyperbolic teases from shilling actors, but Hollow’s cast wasn’t lying: No one saw this coming. Sin eater Henry Parrish (John Noble) is actually the son of Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) and the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse. Our jaws remain in 1781.

50. Trophy Wife[EP. 7 ”The Date”], ABCScene Diane (Marcia Gay Harden) plays beer pong to get an embarrassing photo removed from ”Instant-Gram.”Why The vicious doctor is never funnier than when she’s trying to bridge a generational gap, and in a season of brilliant one-liners by Harden, this showdown was brimming with the best. (R.I.P. Trophy Wife.)

EW.COM If you missed any of these moments, you can still catch them online. Watch the scenes — and find out more about what went into making them from the actors and writers themselves — at ew.com/bestscenes.

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